Source: thestatehousefile.com 1/18/24
The Indiana House Courts and Criminal Code Committee discussed several bills Wednesday, including HB 1203 and HB 1307, both of which were held for …
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HB 1307 was authored by Rep. Ben Smaltz, R-Auburn.
“The first thing that 1307 does is if a sex offender moves from another state to Indiana, they would be required to register for the entire time they are in Indiana and in effect for life. Second, it prevents a serious sex offender from being in a park when they can reasonably expect a child under the age of 18 to be present,” Smaltz said.
Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, asked, “What is the policy reason for just saying if you’re from out of state, no matter what the crime was there and how it relates to the Indiana crime, you’re going to be on the list for life, as opposed to lesser time?”
Smaltz responded, “I would say the easiest thing to do for the state of Indiana would be to follow suit with 18 other states and make all sex offenses a lifetime registration. All 18 states that have a lifetime registration have a process that an offender can petition after a certain amount of time for them to be removed from the registry.”
Michael Harris is director of Indiana Voices, which he described as “an advocacy organization representing the 20,000-plus Hoosiers that would be negatively impacted by this bill and their families.”
“There are unintended consequences of this bill,” he said. “The restrictions would hinder normal activities of registrants, affecting family events, sports events, recreational pursuits, and there’s little evidence that it would increase child safety.”
See the Indiana Voices website to take action
This was done probably to deter “state shopping” which really isn’t a thing as anywhere on American soil is intentionally made to feel unwanted/unwelcome for anyone with this label. It’s a united orbit of hate.
And I’m sure Rep. Smaltz is armed with surely hundreds of arrest reports of current Indiana registrants who were convicted of sex crimes in other states with charges ranging from sex crimes to drug dealing to murder to show how critical this proposal is.
I’m also sure Rep. Smaltz is prepared to discuss in detail the processes for removal in the 18 states that have lifetime registration across the board. Surely he wrote something similar in his proposal. It just wasn’t mentioned in the article.
And finally, any insinuation that Rep. Smaltz is just posturing during an election season is just flat out insulting. Shame on anyone who even thinks such blasphemy.
There seem to be constitutional problems with this kind of legislation. Applying different rules to people because they’re moving from an outside state to your state is unconstitutional. I think California was the first state to have been shot down for having those kinds of rules for people coming into the state to receive the state’s perceived more generous welfare benefits. But this taxes my sometimes unreliable long-term memory.
First off, let us all say what everyone should be saying every single time that they encounter scumbags such as Indiana Rep. Ben Smaltz, R-Auburn, in any location, online, in-person, anywhere. “You and your family should go f*ck yourselves, scumbag Ben Smaltz. You are an anti-freedom, anti-American.” Someone should tell him that he such a Smaltz. Even his name sounds like an insult, lol.
We can call scumbag Ben Smaltz names because he calls people names. So people should feel free and encouraged to do so. RASTs deserve disrespect.
I think it is so funny that these criminal legislators have nothing better to do than jack off with Registries. That’s great that there aren’t any significant, actual problems to deal with. Good for Indiana.
Why is he so worried about getting extra people on their big government Hit List? Is he trying to grow government and scam more tax dollars? He wants the local residents listed on the Hit Lists. I don’t know about them but if I was going to commit a sex crime I think I’d go somewhere far from my home, like Indiana, and I’d do it there. I’d probably specifically target a park. Just because of a**holes like Ben Smaltz.
Scumbag wants to keep local taxpayers out of parks. Does he think that people who want to commit a serious crime care about that? Especially someone from 1,000 miles away? All the scumbags are doing is harassing families.
RASTs live in Fantasyland. Detached from facts and reality. Make them pay concrete consequences.
This is a decent start of a deeper article these journalism students could be doing about this topic. There is a link on the right side of the page where their executive editor could be contacted to encourage further research, if anyone is interested.
Dear friends,
As a person forced to register in Florida, which has lifetime registration for all sexual offenses, who moved to Iowa, which is one of seven “whichever is longer” states i.e. whose laws say that if you move from out-of-state you have to be on there registry for the time require by the state where you offended if that’s longer (meaning they put me on lifetime for an offense that would be 10 years if committed in Iowa) – I feel compelled to point out that California is in fact one of those 18 states that have a lifetime registry. Although I realize that y’all have a tiered registry with time periods for removal based on the tier, you still must apply to get off. As Janice points out on almost every ACSOL zoom meeting, there are tens of thousands of CA registrants who will be on the registry for life simply because they never get around to applying to get off. As IN legislator Smalz stated so eloquently, “All 18 states that have a lifetime registration have a process that an offender can petition after a certain amount of time …”